Origins of the Partnership by Seabury Quinn

Book Details

Origins of the Partnership – The backgrounds and origins of the greatest occult detective team – Dr. de Grandin and Dr. Trowbridge.

From the original prophecy of the avenger of evil –

“…I see thy generations marching down the corridors of time, and some of them strive valiantly on land and sea with those who raise the banner of oppression, and some there are who wrestle manfully with ghostly foes. Thy progeny shall overcome the forces of the phantom world. It is a birth-gift. Ghouls, ghosts and warlocks, vile witches and the mighty company who traffic in hell’s commerce shall not prevail against them. In lands as yet unknown thy name and blood shall spread confusion in the hosts of evil.”

• to the first drink after a job well done and a demon destroyed –

“Voilà tout! We are in Paris once more, my friend. Come, let us have a drink.”

• these are the origins of that greatest team of occult detectives Dr. de Grandin and Dr. Trowbridge.

Fortune’s Fools (1938) – A thrilling weird story out of the Dark Ages — a tale of wolves who were men and men who were wolves — a story of a Provencal soldier of fortune and a beautiful girl, who indeed were Fortune’s fools

1. A Solitary Horseman Rides
2. Otto von Wolfberg
3. Seen from a Dungeon Window
4. Two in a Tower
5. Two Ride Forth Together
6. The Wolf Pack Hunts Again
7. “We Be Fortune’s Fools!”

The Stone Image (1919)

The Horror on the Links (1925) – A Tale That Climbs Steadily to a Climax of Stark Terror.

The Tenants of Broussac (1925) – Complete Novelette About an Old Curse and a Gigantic Snake. A twelve chapter novelette.

Seabury Grandin Quinn (1889–1969) was most famous for his stories of the occult detective Jules de Grandin. He wrote over 90 de Grandin stories from 1925 to 1951, published almost entirely in Weird Tales.

Origins of the Partnership contains 6 illustrations.

Files:

1. OriginsOfThePartnership.epub

Excerpt: Fortune’s Fools

1. A Solitary Horseman Rides

COLD as polar ice, thin-strained as a sophisticated schoolman’s logic, the moonlight flooded down the smalt blue sky, a spilth of argent luminance that laid a silver plating upon tree and bough and twig, on rock and scanty, frost-scarred turf, struck a thousand glittering reflections from the stars that glinted diamond-bright against the purple heavens, and picked dazzling highlights from the million tiny facets of the hoarfrost’s rime. So bitter cold it was that whip-sharp crackings sounded from the frozen tarns where ice twice frozen ruptured into spider-webs of splayed-out fissures. The dry, dead leaves that clung like corpses hanged in chains upon the oak-trees’ branches beat against each other with a clacking rustle like the brittle crackle of a crumpled parchment. The horse’s hooves struck on the frozen earth as on the flints of a paved street.

The horseman hunched his shoulders forward in the rising wind and dropped his bridle on the saddle-bow as he beat his hands together to restore stagnated circulation. From crown to knee he was enveloped in an almost shapeless garment made of sheepskin with the wool turned in, a sort of loose surtout topped by a hood which hid his features as a friar’s countenance is hidden by his raised capoch. His legs were cased in boots of Spanish leather decorated at the heels with star-shaped brazen rowels. Behind his left knee swung the metal sheath of a long sword. His palms struck on each other sharply; presently their tempo quickened, beating out the rhythm of a song:

“Nicolete o le gent cors,
Por vos sui venuz en bos. . . .”

His voice rang through the frost-bound uplands and echoed back among the stark tree boles:

“Bel compaignet,
Dieus ait Aucassinet . . .”

Like an echo to his final note there came an answering voice, but not in song. It was knife-sharp, edged with terror, shrill, uncontrolled, despairing, the cry of one who has the terrible foreknowledge of swift doom upon her, yet offers up a last despairing prayer for help although the possibility of help is hopeless.

Silhouetted like a shadow in a lantern show against the cold effulgence of the moonlight, a figure raced across the hill brow, running with such light swift grace the horseman could have sworn its feet scarce spurned the frost-rimed rocks. Yet even as he watched, he saw the runner reel and stumble, then dash on again, but more slowly, with less sure-footed certainty. The fugitive was tiring rapidly.

Now an eery, long-drawn howl came quavering through the quiet night, and across the hilltop swept three furry shapes, wide-jawed, loose-tongued, eyes gleaming with a light as green as jealousy’s consuming fire. If the hunted ran as though she rode the wind, the hunters traveled as though borne by lightning, and every leap they took made shorter the short gap that stretched between them and their quarry. No hunting-dogs, these; no sleuths or boarhounds. The watching rider knew their cry. He had not hunted in the forests of the Languedoc for nothing.

“Lupins, by the Holy Child!” he exclaimed softly. “Wolves!”

The hunted woman stumbled to her knees, then caught herself and raced with tripping feet along the frost-paved pathway leading down the mountainside. The horse shied violently as she fell almost between his forelegs, struggled to her knees and held her hands up piteously.

“Succor!” she begged between retching sobs. “Help me, beau sir, or I perish!” Beneath her tippet of bright fur her bosom heaved tumultuously, her supplicating hands were trembling as with palsy. He could hear her fighting to regain her breath in hard gasps.

“Dom Dio, mistress, hast brought thy goods to the right market!” he replied as he swung a leg across his saddle-bow.

The horse gave a sharp neigh of terror as the gray pursuers swept down on them, but the man showed neither fear nor hesitancy. “And art thou hungered, Sire Lupus?” he demanded as the foremost wolf leaped at him. “Taste this. ‘Twill satisfy thy appetite, methinks!”

His sword flashed forward like a streak of frozen lightning, and the great wolf fell back with a strangling cry so human it seemed it could not possibly have come from lupine throat, then rolled and thrashed about with impotently clawing forepaws, as though it choked upon a bone. But it was no bone that throttled back its gurgling cries, as the ever-widening pool of blood about the furry head attested.

Across the writhing body of their mate the two remaining wolves leaped like twin missiles from an arbalest, one from the right, the other from the left, with the swordsman as the apex of their triangle. When he closes for the kill the wolf is silent; but these were not as other wolves, for as they leapt they gave tongue, and one of them laughed like a man and one seemed growling curses in a guttural tongue, but both bared long white tusks as cruel and sharp as Paynim simitars.”

Excerpt From: Seabury Quinn. “Origins of the Partnership.”